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So in one of my 3000-level courses at college (AKA one of the 'shoot me now, why the hell did I choose this as my major' courses), we all have to do group projects as our main focus for the second half of the semester. My group is trying to improve the annual spring fest weekend by having a band, solo musician or DJ come and perform. I go to a small liberal arts school just outside Boston, and everyone always complains about our half-assed spring fest when compared to the ones at other colleges. 18-22 year olds just aren't that interested in cotton candy and bouncy castles. And the musicians that the campus activities board usually books to come perform, well, quite frankly... suck. None of the people on the committee know their ass from their elbow when it comes to music and what's popular on campus, and the biggest names that have come to the school were some 8th place runner-up on an American Idol knock-off, and a wannabe New Kids on the Block dance troupe. (It hasn't always been that way, though; they did get The Disco Biscuits to play back in 1999 ).
Anyway, I was wondering if any of you kind folks on Inforoo had some advice to pass along on how to book a band / rapper / DJ / singer-songwriter for an event - for instance, how to book a band, what percentage the artist's paycheck should be of the total budget, if there are any booking agencies you can recommend, how to deal with security and parking, renting a stage and speakers, et cetera. Any help would be really appreciated on this, because I have no idea what I'm doing at all.
So in one of my 3000-level courses at college (AKA one of the 'shoot me now, why the hell did I choose this as my major' courses), we all have to do group projects as our main focus for the second half of the semester. My group is trying to improve the annual spring fest weekend by having a band, solo musician or DJ come and perform. I go to a small liberal arts school just outside Boston, and everyone always complains about our half-assed spring fest when compared to the ones at other colleges. 18-22 year olds just aren't that interested in cotton candy and bouncy castles. And the musicians that the campus activities board usually books to come perform, well, quite frankly... suck. None of the people on the committee know their ass from their elbow when it comes to music and what's popular on campus, and the biggest names that have come to the school were some 8th place runner-up on an American Idol knock-off, and a wannabe New Kids on the Block dance troupe. (It hasn't always been that way, though; they did get The Disco Biscuits to play back in 1999 ).
Anyway, I was wondering if any of you kind folks on Inforoo had some advice to pass along on how to book a band / rapper / DJ / singer-songwriter for an event - for instance, how to book a band, what percentage the artist's paycheck should be of the total budget, if there are any booking agencies you can recommend, how to deal with security and parking, renting a stage and speakers, et cetera. Any help would be really appreciated on this, because I have no idea what I'm doing at all.
Thank you for your help!
I know a guy from my fest volunteer work who can probably help or tell me someone else who can. It may be too small for him to have time for. Let me see what I can do. When does this event take place?
^^that would be really great, even if it is a no-go. Thank you. Don't sweat too much over it though - we don't actually have to go through and book the band (though we very well may), but we do have to go through all the necessary steps and find out what would be involved, how the logistics would work, and what the total cost would be. I'm basically just looking for a ball-park figure to know how much something like this would cost in total once you factor in the stage rental, sound system, people besides the musician who need to be paid, et cetera. I've combed a few artist booking sites and found some good, moderately well-known musicians available for relatively cheap, but if anyone knows of other sites, I'd love to hear them.
It's for our college's springfest week, which is usually the second-to-last week in April, so I'm pretty sure it will be the week of April 19th - 25th (the dates haven't been officially announced on the college website yet, but I should know for certain within the next couple days. It's like Roo though, you can generally get a good sense of when it will be by looking at the calendar) . We still need to talk with the campus activities board to see how much from the student activities fund they would be willing to put up versus how much we'd need to raise ourselves, but for now I think we'll be looking at up to $10,000 for artist cost alone. However, if we choose to make it a ticketed event versus a free one, then our budget might even be double that. Luckily SGA (student govt. association) has also been trying to improve the 2010 springfest independently, so we're trying to collaborate with them on this. Having them on our side will be a major help in our petition to get this done.
Sadly, two of the three other group members are pretty lazy about the whole thing, so it's mostly been left up to me and this one girl who, to be honest, knows diddly squat about music (when I suggested booking a DJ, I had to spend 20 minutes explaining the difference between the type of DJ who mixes and scratches records to create something semi-original, like a club DJ, and the type of DJ who just plays other people's stuff, like a radio DJ). Ahh well, such is life.
You mentioned stage rental... if it's an event hosted by the university, I'd think there would be a venue on campus that could be made available to you. Maybe at no cost or at a preferential rate?
Who normally puts on this springfest? It sounds to me like there's multiple organizations here arguing over jurisdiction to run the show. Or is this campus activities board part of SGA?
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